LAHORE: The University of Health Sciences (UHS) in its 81st Syndicate meeting, held here on Friday with the vice-chancellor Prof. Ahsan Waheed Rathore in the chair, accorded approval to ‘Freezing Policy’ for undergraduate programs was approved, ensuring that freezing in MBBS and BDS programs would not affect examination attempts.
Other key approval accorded in the meeting included the affiliation of Bakhtawar Amin College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Multan, for the Pharm-D program, following an inspection as per Section 38 of the UHS Ordinance, 2002.
The syndicate also adopted decisions from the Inter-University Board of Public Sector Medical Universities of Punjab, classifying MD Endocrinology and MD Gastroenterology as Level-IV degree programs and implementing specialty-specific Joint Centralized Admission Tests (JCATs) in nine categories with a 75% pass requirement. Additionally, a ‘UHS Leave Policy 2024’ was introduced, allowing a maximum of 18 days of leave per academic year, with additional leave requiring remedial classes to meet the 85% attendance requirement.
The syndicate also approved a new policy on fines and disciplinary actions, recommending counseling and parent-teacher meetings instead of fines for absenteeism. Colleges must submit their codes of conduct to the University for Approval and conduct parent-teacher meetings for poor performance cases. Other approved policies include the UHS Communication Policy, Transport Policy, and Internship Policy.
The syndicate approved the academic council's recommendations to amend UHS examination regulations. Starting from the annual 2024 Examinations, internal examiners will be replaced by additional examiners in all Oral, Viva Voce, and Practical exams. This applies to programs on Modular Integrated and Semester Schemes that started from the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 sessions.
The internal assessment weightage in professional exams will increase from 10% to 20% for these schemes. Programs on the traditional Annual Scheme will, however, retain the 10% internal assessment and current examiner system. Internal assessment marks for the Annual Scheme must be submitted quarterly to the Controller of Examinations office within two weeks of each quarter's end. Moreover, a new university organogram was approved for better administrative and management restructuring.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024